‘PAINFUL, UNPLEASANT AND COSTLY.’ “That’s where we are” on Brexit, the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier has told public officials, private citizens’ groups and business executives in uncharacteristically blunt briefings across the Continent, several attendees told POLITICO.

— Barnier has said that despite Theresa May’s highly-anticipated speech in Florence on Friday, which could include an initial Brexit bill offer, Britain still doesn’t get it: The U.K. will not achieve the “special” bespoke trade deal it has demanded without lengthy negotiations after its official departure.

— Barnier was also clear on Britain’s attempts to leapfrog discussions on exit issues such as the Brexit bill and citizens’ rights in order to get to trade talks. “How do you build a future relationship if there’s no trust, if you haven’t honored your commitments?” he asked his audiences.

THERESA VS. BORIS: NEW YORK EDITION. The rest of the world’s power set spent the U.N. General Assembly preoccupied with North Korea’s nuclear tests or the plight of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. British pols and media had only one topic atop their minds: the Theresa and Boris Row, writes Annabelle Dickson.

— While newspaper stands were littered with briefings and counter-briefings following the foreign secretary’s unsanctioned intervention in the Telegraph ahead of May’s Florence speech on Friday, Boris and Theresa were following separate schedules just yards apart in New York.

— It was on Tuesday night, almost 24 hours after the prime minister arrived in New York that May and Johnson appeared together, though it wasn’t clear if they in fact spoke.

THEY SAID WHAT?

— “It strikes me that he is completely out of the loop.” — European Commissioner for Agriculture Phil Hogan on Boris Johnson. He added that the foreign secretary’s statements on Brexit were contradictory and at odds with his own government’s position.

Theresa May delivers a speech to a less-than-packed hall at the United Nations General Assembly in New York | Drew Angerer/Getty Images

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Brussels’ chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier is not looking for a specific figure — whether it’s €100 billion or €20 billion — in order to recommend to EU leaders in October that “sufficient progress” has been made to allow talks to move on to the transition and future trading relationship.

“We know putting a figure on it would be embarrassing for the U.K.,” explained one senior European diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, who insisted “not one euro” was up for negotiation.

What the EU is looking for is a commitment on the principles of what Britain owes. A concession on Britain’s legal obligations would clear the way for the cash to flow.

And yet this, in many ways, is even trickier. Numbers can be fudged, chopped up and spread over a number of years or offered as payments in return for something of value to the ordinary British punter. Principles are political.

The heart of the dilemma is that the U.K. does not accept that the EU’s seven-year budget — the MFF in the jargon — is a legal commitment.

Britain believes its legal obligations arise from annual EU budgets, not the seven-year plan, and therefore end when the U.K. leaves.

A dramatic change in position on this point is not going to happen, a senior British official indicated. If the U.K. prime minister offers to pay anything — the consensus is that she will pledge to make up the shortfall in the EU’s budget as a result of Britain’s exit — it will be presented as an act of goodwill. It will be honoring a “political commitment” not a “legal commitment.”

It is unlikely to be enough for the EU27, who will get their chance to express their displeasure at a meeting in Tallin, Estonia, next Friday when May joins her counterparts for dinner.

— 1 percent — The U.K.’s forecasted growth in 2018, according to the OECD. The report demotes the U.K. to the back of the G7 nations. Catherine Mann, the OECD’s chief economist, said: “Brexit will represent a serious [economic] shock.”

— 14 — The number of British farm laborers recruited in the U.K. in the first five months of 2017 out of a total of 13,4000. Three-quarters of them were from Bulgaria and Romania, and almost all of the rest were from Eastern Europe, according to the National Farmers Union.

POLICY BRIEFING — FINANCIAL SERVICES

— A new European Commission proposalgives the European Supervisory Authorities a greater role in deciding whether non-EU firms get access to the single market. The ESAs will be responsible for contributing to initial “equivalence” decisions that allow non-EU firms access to the single market, as well as for the ongoing monitoring of rules in those jurisdictions.

— In stark contrast to the European Medicines Agency, whose director and officials have visited cities bidding to be its post-Brexit home, the European Banking Authority told EUObserver it would turn down any invitations by candidate cities. The EBA’s spokeswoman said the move was “in line with the EBA’s internal decision to ensure objectivity.”— There’s a small chance that Brexit could be the catalyst for the next global financial crisis if things don’t go as planned, according to a report by Deutsche Bank analysts. The report examines events and issues that could trigger a crisis, including the unwinding of the ultra-loose central bank policy and a crisis in China.INS AND OUTS

— Merck Sharp and Dohme has poached British pharma’s go-to lead on all things Brexit. In November, Virginia Acha will leave the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry to take on a new global executive director role at MSD (the European division of Merck & Co) with responsibility for international regulatory policy for Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

ELSEWHERE…

— The European Parliament’s Brexit coordinator delivered an apparent swipe at Boris Johnson over his uneasiness at young people wanting to express their identity as Europeans. The U.K. foreign secretary wrote last week he was troubled by “young people with the 12 stars lipsticked on their faces.” But Guy Verhofstadt countered, “You can be English, British and European at the same time.”

— The House of Commons’ business, energy and industrial strategy committee launched an inquiry Wednesday into what Brexit means for British business, starting with the civil nuclear sector and the effect of leaving the European Atomic Energy Community. It will also look at the automotive, aerospace, processed food and drink and pharmaceuticals industries.

— Scrapping the air passenger duty on intra-U.K. flights, currently £26 on a return flight, would lead to an 8 percent increase in demand and make “many new domestic connections commercially viable for airlines,” Heathrow Airport said in a letter to Chancellor Phillip Hammond. The argument is presented in the airport’s newly released nine-point plan for a burgeoning industry after Brexit.

— “If we want [the EU] to approach the negotiations constructively, we need to reassure them that Brexit should not harm the European project, nor risk their security or prosperity … one option is to declare an end to Britain’s long-standing but unspoken foreign policy goal: to divide the continental countries to ensure a balance of power,” Theresa May’s former chief of staff Nick Timothy writes in the Telegraph.

— Brussels fears a weakened Theresa May will not be able to stand by any pledges she makes in her Florence speech on Brexit, according to Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer, who met with the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier, his deputy Sabine Weyand, and Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s chief of staff Martin Selmayr on Wednesday. “They want to see real progress, and they want follow through,” Starmer said. “Not a speech and nothing else.”

— No members of the Commission will attend May’s Florence speech, a spokesperson for the Commission told journalists today.

— A welcoming committee of protesters is preparing for May’s speech in Florence on Friday. New Europeans, a European organization promoting free movement and EU citizenship rights is organizing a vigil at the site of the former British Consulate and a silent march in the city center to protest May’s failure to “unilateral guarantees” on citizen’s rights.

— “Reclaiming sovereignty allows the nation to decide for itself how to balance the needs of security with the requirements of privacy and keep its citizens (and visitors) safe. Cooperating with others to improve security plainly makes sense. Giving up the right to decide does not,” so says Boris Johnson’s wife, human rights lawyer Marina Wheeler, in the Spectator.

— Former British Chancellor George Osborne is taking up his seventh job, as a visiting fellow at Stanford University in California, the Guardian reported. Former Tory Chancellor Osborne, who is the editor of the London Evening Standard, among many other things, has been given two separate roles at the university: distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and a dean’s fellow at its graduate business school.

— Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg has joined joined a line-up of literary figures contributing essays and short stories to a new anthology on Brexit. Rees-Mogg’s work will appear alongside pieces by pro-Brexit and pro-Remain authors such as Lionel Shriver, Matt Haig, Jessie Burton and Ian Rankin in “Goodbye, Europe,” to be published next month.

BREXIT COUNTDOWN

There are 554 days until the U.K.’s formal exit from the European Union.